A Blessed Burden
When it comes to helping writers, how much is too much? At what point is our “consulting” more like “conforming”
to an academic norm and does this help certain writers? Based on writing center philosophy, the whole
point to what we do-- help writers of all capabilities at any level during the
writing process for any style of writing assignment—is to offer the appropriate
level of guidance. Honestly, I feel that
there are going to be times when my assistance is going to be more
directive.
The senior literature major that’s having trouble rephrasing
a poignant element to her analysis of Milton may need a more prescriptive
assessment. She knows the material far
better than I do, so what she needs is someone that she can offer a synopsis of
the text and together we hash out how to explain on paper how it applies to the
context she’s arguing. Situations such
as this call for a more prescriptive approach.
The writer needs more direction out of respect to the direct approach
they have with us regarding the material.
I support the fact that many writers such as the example given arrive to
their consultations with not only drafts to work over but an in-depth
understanding of the material they’ve researched. But it’s not just these writers that can
benefit from this approach.
There are times when writers come in with an assignment
sheet and have absolutely no clue where to start. These sessions pretty much remain at the
pretextual stage of consulting. I get to
know them as a writer, as a learner. We
collaborate on what it is their professor is wanting for the assignment. Open ended questions allow the writer to
respond freely while I scribe the ideas down.
This week was a significant week as my internships melted into one
another.
A business major taking a literature survey from the professor I happen to be interning for, was in need of extra
guidance revising her take-home midterm essay.
The assignment? To compare and
contrast two authors—and one of each of their works—from two different Realist
literary periods. The context of the
situation is that she is a first generation college student who’s spent most of
her school career in ESL writing courses, her conferences throughout school
revolved around her interpreting for her parents. She is a student who’s remained on the
margins because the state offers minimal guidance to ensure that she receives
the best education available. Granted,
to get into this literature course, one must complete writing courses through
Eng. 102—the assumption being that having passed 102, there’s an understanding
of analyzing text, sharing and expanding on this knowledge through writing,
research, and basic MLA format.
Needless to say, the assignment was not fulfilled to the
professor’s expectations. Rather than
have her fail, however, the professor has enlisted my help to teach our young
writer how to accomplish this assignment.
Collectively, we hope to guide her to a level of understanding literary
analysis so that she may do so in the future on her own.
My first session with the student proved to be the most
vital. We always talk about the
importance of setting the tone—building rapport through our pretextual stage of
the session before jumping into the writing.
I learned about her study habits, the extra home obligations that force
her to skip steps in learning and study on the fly or late into the night. I learned that she loves this literature
class because she’s reading things that she never read before. “The tasks asked
of me are harder than what I’m used to but that okay”, she said. She’s up for the challenge and based on her
upright posture and gleam in her eye, she’s ready for me to show her how to
tackle it head-on.
The first thing we tackled was the assignment
description: compare/contrast two different authors from two different Realist genres. The first oops was her misreading the fact
that the two writers had to be from different realist perspectives. She had inadvertently compared two social
realist writers; this is something that is very common. So we talked—pencils down, books closed,
essay put away—I asked her about what she remembered about the Realism
lecture. She responded with amazing
clarity about the three major styles and that she remembered them because some
of the writing reminded her of stories her family told about when they
immigrated to America. She was amazing—before,
when we’d talk after lecture or even at the beginning of the assignment
breakdown she was timid, anxious, and almost fearful that I was going to ream
her for not completing her essay correctly.
Here sat a young woman who was knowledgeable and comfortable talking
about the differences between social and regionalist Realist writers to me, her
teaching intern.
Because of her ease, I approached the subject of the essay
more minimalist, I asked her what two stories, specifically, could she compare
and contrast given what she knows about the styles of writing. She immediately knew which of the two social realist
writers she had chosen before. But she
was struggling with tying down a regionalist writer she felt had a similar “flare”
or gave her the same emotional connection to the story as who she chose. Rather than force her to keep digging, I
began to point out some similarities to a fiction piece that she’d said was one
of her favorites. She countered that she
loved the story, the imagery, and the strength in the main character but that
she didn’t see how it fit into the assignment.
We could have been there for hours if I’d remained hands off—I wanted
her to remain motivated that she really did know her stuff about the styles of
realism. We went back to the second
author’s bio. She found that the author
wrote about a time in her childhood, captured a culture that was disappearing
when she was young. The light bulb
moment came when she realized that even though the area wasn’t like how the
author described at the time she wrote her story, that she was still a
regionalist writer because of how she was able to make her feel like she was in
the bayou with the little girl (protagonist).
She was on a roll. We
worked together walking through each author’s work, their approach to writing,
etc. I wrote down the list comparing and
contrasting so she had a reference later when she began to write her
paragraphs. Where I felt I was more
prescriptive was in offering her ways to think more about how she analyzed the
text. Using terms like protagonist,
emblems, figurative language—I not only told her why it was important to know
but how to look for it. She picked it
right up. Soon she was racing through
the book pointing out and asking if her analysis was “correct”. Then she stopped, “Wait, I know I’m correct
because I can defend my statement with this example, huh!” The ginormous grin stretching from ear to ear
sitting across from me said it all. To
close her session, I asked her to free write an introduction to Realism, tying
back to when I first asked her to tell me about what she knew—now with a more
scholarly tone. She and I will be
meeting next week to go over her writing that dives into the similarities and
differences of the two author’s work.
It’s definitely a work in progress, but I know that she’s
going to succeed. I think that if I’d
remained hands-off she would have felt more frustration at not knowing how to
find the answers. Prodding her with
needless questions to lead her to the answers could have made her feel
inadequate. The walls that would have
built up during the session could have prevented her from seeing her true
potential.
I never want my clients to feel like they are only good enough
when I help them. I do have another
student in the same class that makes comments that she feels like she only
understands the reading or the tasks asked of her when I’m around, so I need to
figure out how to remedy that. The issue
there is I can’t get her into the writing center—only so much can be inferred
via email communication. Anyway, there
are many times when I go into a session anxious that I may not have enough to
offer the client, I feel that their wealth of knowledge about their subject,
their major, the intensity of the project will overshadow my knowledge about
communicating this information through writing.
But the times that they leave motivated, confidant in their skills
because I’ve had them demonstrate what I’ve shown them and explain why it works—tells
me that I am doing them justice in taking a more directive approach.
